


Having Read the Book of Myths

by emungere



Series: Ladders [7]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2801261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Discussions about cannibalism and house renovation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Having Read the Book of Myths

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to fitofpique for the beta! <3
> 
> Title from Adrienne Rich's [Diving into the Wreck](http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/diving-wreck)

Will squirmed backwards, further into the hole in the side of the house. It gave him no more than a quarter inch of leeway on either side of his shoulders. With one arm stretched up over his head, he could just reach the pipe that was giving him trouble. With the other, he reached for the plumber’s tape. 

He groped in the dirt, blind. The rim of light around his body was all he could see of the outside world. He inched back toward the opening, away from the pipe, and caught the edge of his toolbox. The tape should be on the top shelf. He jabbed his palm with a screwdriver and caught one already ragged nail on the edge of a small saw in the process of discovering that it wasn’t. 

Memory kicked in and showed him the toolbox overturned in the back seat of the car last night. He’d thought he’d collected everything, but the tape must’ve rolled under the seat. He closed his eyes briefly. 

"Hannibal?" he called. "Can you go look for the plumber’s tape? Should be in the car somewhere." 

"I don’t recall signing on as your assistant," Hannibal said.

"Yeah, well, I don’t recall signing on as the subject of your sweaty working class fantasies, but here we are. You’ve been sitting on your ass watching me for months. A stroll to the car isn’t going to kill you." 

"I’m reading."

"All this time, and you’re still on Montaigne? Yeah, you’re doing a ton of reading." 

A pause, and the clink of Hannibal setting down his iced tea on the small table next to his chair. "Very well. Where is it?"

"Try the back seat first, but it might’ve rolled." 

Footsteps crunched away across the gravel, and he heard the car door open. He used the wait to wipe sweat off his face and cobwebs out of his hair. The spiders that had made them seemed to have moved on, probably into the house. Hannibal wanted to get a cleaning crew in. Will was seriously considering letting him do it. The amount of bird shit on the rafters haunted him. 

"Any time!" he called. "It’s only about a hundred degrees in here." 

Hannibal pressed the tape into his hand and stayed close, one hand on Will’s thigh. "Yes, it is quite hot," he said mildly. 

Will concentrated on easing his arm and the tape in through the narrow gap between his body and the splintered wood that edged the hole. He didn't want to have this argument right now. 

"You had air conditioning in Wolf Trap," Hannibal said. 

Will closed his eyes briefly. "It came with the house. Do you know what a nightmare it would be to fit this place with ducts? We've talked about this." 

"You have an irrational–"

"Practical." 

_"Ideological_ objection to comfort." 

Will concentrated on wrapping tape around the joint and on contorting himself so that he could use both hands to screw it back in place. The whole length of pipe should be replaced. Replaced and welded. He'd probably end up doing it in January with numb hands and a dripping nose. 

"How cold does it get here?" he asked. 

Hannibal paused. "Not as cold as Baltimore, certainly. Snow is rare."

"Good." 

Will wriggled his way out of the hole an inch at a time. Hannibal knelt on a neatly folded dropcloth and looked down at him. He hadn’t moved his hand from Will’s thigh, just allowed Will’s progress to move it upward. Now it rested on his bare stomach. Will pulled the hem of his shirt up to wipe sweat and dirt from his face. 

"You have a dead spider in your hair," Hannibal said. 

"Are you going to get it out, or are you just letting me know?" Hannibal plucked it carefully from his hair and tossed it aside. Will glanced over at it. Sizable. "Glad it was dead." 

Hannibal pulled a few other bits and pieces from his hair and swept a clump of spider silk away from his forehead. "You hate the cold that much?" he asked. 

"I never got used to the winters up north." Will looked up at the sky, painfully blue and infinitely cloudless. "And it’s not like we didn’t hit Erie and Lake Michigan when I was growing up. I don't know. I was such a skinny little kid." He could still feel it, the bitter wind through his thin jacket, numb hands and feet like ice, never warm, even in bed. 

"A unit for the kitchen. Ceiling fans elsewhere." Hannibal paused. "I dislike sweating," he said stiffly. 

In a weird way, it was maybe the most personal thing Will had ever heard him say. He nodded. "We can do that." 

"Thank you." 

Hannibal passed his hand over Will's stomach and slid his fingers below the waistband of his jeans. Will felt, if anything, warmer than he had before. 

"You don’t seem to mind it when I sweat," he said. 

"It's a great deal more attractive on you than it is on me."

"You really were just ogling me the whole time?" 

"Does that surprise you?" 

Will shrugged and looked up at him, hovering somewhere between pleased and uncertain. "Wasn't expecting it from you, I guess."

“Why is that?”

“I think I was half-convinced you were only attracted to me for my brain.” 

“It’s a very attractive brain.” 

Hannibal traced one finger in a line across Will’s forehead, right where the skull would be cut open for an autopsy. Will laughed, and Hannibal smiled down at him. 

Wind picked up a few dead leaves nearby and whirled them down the garden path. Will’s thoughts turned in his head, similarly caught up and blown about by Hannibal’s direct gaze, by his presence here in what was to be their home. The two of them together, cooking in the kitchen, working in the garden, sleeping in the bed they had picked out online only two days ago. An idea of permanence had crept into Will’s pores along with the heat and the smell of sawdust.

"Would you eat me if I died?" Will said suddenly. "Regardless of how it happened. Whether it was you or not. Is that something you'd want?" 

"Does that thought disturb you?"

"No. I was just wondering. It's not your typical–” Pathology. But that was a word he'd been trying to avoid since their blow-up over Hannibal's fixed ideas of a proper dinner time. "You didn't do it to honor them," he said instead. "Not like Hobbs. There was no respect there." 

"I do respect you. And yet I can see the appeal, yes. Do we not all, at some level, wish to consume that which we love and possess it entirely?" 

Will stared up at him. "You don't believe in love. You said so." 

Hannibal gave him that cool look and slow blink. "But you do," he said. "Your dogs, your friends. Near strangers. You become attached so quickly. Abigail. Georgia Madchen." 

Will turned his head away. He could see her burning. Hear her. Very nearly feel the flames on his own skin. 

"I wonder, will you forgive me that, too, in time?" Hannibal said, tone distant. 

Will glanced at him, but Hannibal was looking off across the field behind the house. "It’s not my place to forgive you for what you did to other people," Will said. 

"Their deaths don’t trouble me." 

"Then what does?"

"You. I believe I am more unhappy now than I have been in my adult life. And that is because of you." 

"You can put it on me if you want, but you’re the one changing. You’re letting yourself change."

"I don’t know how you can suppose this is voluntary." 

"I told you we were terrible for each other." 

Will sat up and leaned in until he could rest his forehead against Hannibal’s. Hannibal closed his eyes. His hand curved loosely over Will’s shoulder. 

"You are a disruption to my peace of mind, yes. And what am I to you?"

"You erode me."

"You have always been so sure of who you are. Surely you can resist easily enough."

"I don’t want to resist any more than you do." 

"Will it end badly?" 

"I don’t care how it ends," Will said.

"No. Neither do I." 

The kiss was slow and easy, and either of them might have started it. Hannibal’s hand cupped the back of Will’s head. Will shifted and swung one leg over Hannibal’s thighs. "You can if you want," he said.

Hannibal blinked at him and licked his lips. "What?" 

"Eat me. When I’m dead. I think I want you to." 

Hannibal pulled him close and held him with terrific strength. He didn’t say a word.

**Author's Note:**

> [emungere.tumblr.com](http://emungere.tumblr.com)


End file.
